Light Rains Sometimes Fall

Across seventy-two short chapters and twelve months, writer and nature lover Lev Parikian charts the changes that each of Japan’s ancient microseasons (of just a few days each) bring to his local British patch – garden, streets, park, and wild cemetery.

From the birth of spring (risshun) in early February to ‘the greater cold’ (daikan) in late January, Lev draws our eye to the exquisite beauty of the outside world, day-to-day.

Instead of Japan’s lotus blossom, praying mantis, and bear, he watches bramble, woodlouse, and urban fox; hawthorn, dragonfly, and peregrine. But the seasonal rhythms – and the power of nature to reflect and enhance our mood – remain.

By turns reflective, witty, and joyous, this is both a nature diary and a revelation of the beauty of the small and subtle changes of the everyday, allowing us to ‘look, look again, look better’.

It is the perfect Spring book to read in real time across the British year.